What does Brown (2001) identify as the central themes and concerns of the novel? What elements conform to the wider generic features of SF?
Browne explores how P.K Dick often drew from real-life events and focused on how they affected individual people. He still allowed readers to see how the world as a whole was shaped by certain events, but he was more interested in the individuals struggle and the interconnectivity between these struggles. More of the generic SF texts were often more concerned with “mad scientist and ravaging alien monsters” and generally discarded developing characters with emotional validity.
Browne also discusses Dick’s exploration of alternative worlds through text like the I Ching and The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. The I Ching acts as a sort of guide to creating a better universe, while the Grasshopper is an actual account of an alternative world which could have certainly become a reality. In more generic SF there is more effort put into creating another ‘physical’ world with different landscape, creatures etc. They try to instil a sense of intrigues through the distinctly ‘unfamiliar’, but PK Dick correctly assumed there is much more intrigue in exploring alternative/false realities within our own existence.
"Dick suggests that the world presented in 'The Man in the High Castle' is but an illusion, that other, better worlds might exist"
ReplyDeleteBrown explains that in all Dick's work there is the ending where you are left to wonder the ending for the characters, and in The Man in the High Castle, this is no exception. Brwon states that this book may be Phillip K. Dick's best work. He also states that this book is about "little people living small lives with honor and confusion."
It gives themes of other-words and a 'reality comapred to our own'. Phiilip K. Dick uses ideas such as 'totalitarianism and Eastern Philosophy'. Though two major pages are missing from the reader, you can tell that Brown highly reconized this book, he found it to be the best of Phiilip K. Dick. The use of a different reality babbles people, this could be something of concern for the novel, the confusion it could create.
Brown, E. (2001).Introduction. In Dick, P.K.,
The Man in the High Castle\.(p.v-xii). London: Penguin.